ABOUT COLLEGE AND COVID-19 WAIVERS

When it comes to COVID-19, a college campus is like a cruise ship, a cinema multiplex and a restaurant all rolled into one. Yet many U.S. institutions of higher education are forging ahead with on-campus, in-person classes and activities for fall terms, making campuses likely hotbeds of illness. Some students, faculty and staff will likely have permanent damage. Some will probably die.

College administrators know this.

These losses will arise from conditions they have created, and those who suffer them will no doubt sue schools for damages. …

Whether compelled, pressured or lured into coming on campus, students and employees should explicitly inform relevant administrators that they are in no way surrendering their rights to hold schools accountable for sloppiness in safeguarding their health.

Schools are preparing to dodge even well-founded lawsuits — to assert that, in essence, students and employees who come to campuses thereby OK carelessness on the part of schools. The technical term for this sort of defense is “primary assumption of risk.”

… But colleges can set up arguments from consent without ever asking anybody to sign anything. They can claim that attendance itself proves consent. It pains me to have to caution students, faculty and staff to protect themselves from legal tactics historically pressed by 19th century businesses seeking to foist risks of injury onto workers and customers. But by reopening campuses and encouraging physical gathering, universities are taking an adversarial and exploitative stance toward those who work and study under their auspices.